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If You Need Power And You’ve Got Money, This Is The Mail Email App To Own

It’s Friday, so it’s true confession time on the Mincey plantation. I hate email almost as much as Republican politicians hate Hillary Clinton. Yeah, I know. It’s that bad.

Email is a scourge and for a number of reasons. It’s time consuming. It’s loaded with spam messages. Apple’s own Mail app is anything but simple and elegant these days; packed with so many features to make free look valuable that it can get crash happy and updates muck with the add-ons Every. Single. Time.

Is there an alternative to Mail? The answer is ‘yes‘ but the question is, “Why do you need an alternative?” Tim the Tool Man Taylor would answer, “More power!” That cuts the list of Mail alternatives to a handful, including a favorite, MailMate, made for Mac users who need email management power.

MailMate is keyboard centric. Nearly every option is available with keyboard shortcuts so you don’t have to bounce back and forth to keyboard and mouse or trackpad. MailMate is IMAP only (that’s what all the Mac email power users use), though, so if you’re in love with POP mail, move on. One of the benefits to using MailMate is how familiar it looks. See?

Familiar, right? Mailboxes on the lefthand sidebar, messages across the center, email content across the bottom, and a minimalist toolbar on top. That’s pretty much where the familiarity with Mail ends.

MailMate is made for users with thousands and thousands of messages and many email accounts. Dynamic email signatures make handling multiple accounts much easier. This powerful app is know for the ability to search thousands of messages instantly, but you can organize email however you want with so-called Smart mailboxes which make it incredibly easy to search and filter through tens of thousands of messages; to paraphrase Steve Jobs, it’s like scrolling through warm butter.

A favorite function for me is Notifications which can be displayed in the Dock, Mail style, or in the more convenient Menubar. As they say, the Devil is in the details, and using MailMate means learning more details. Just look at how to compose a message.

MailMate displays the standard three pane layout, but also has a widescreen mode, statistics, and other options to filter and display messages. If your Mac is not connected to the internet, no problem. Respond or create messages as needed, and they get synced back up to your email accounts when you connect your Mac to the internet.

An email app with this much user power doesn’t come cheap. Fortunately, the developer provides a 30-day try-before-you-buy option. If Mail doesn’t do it for you anymore, you’ll find MailMate a good alternative.